Monday, February 06, 2012

Life Links 2/6/12

Want to know why the NY Times editorials are consistently horribly reasoned and argued? Here's Andrew Rosenthal, the Times' editorial page editor, attempting to argue that abortions are rare in the United States. Seriously, abortions are rare because they are less common than blood transfusions and because there are more cancer-related surgeries? He also delusional thinks that if abortion was banned, the abortion rate would remain the same.

You gotta love this line though:

So was I right to call abortion "rare"? It's relative, but the numbers don't really matter.

By contrast, Komen's first donations to Big Abortion were made voluntarily. A prudent observer would conclude that the best way to avoid being crowbarred by Cecile Richards is never to get mixed up with her organization in the first place.

It's not like she needs the money. Komen's 2010 donation of $580,000 is less than Ms. Richards's salary and benefits. Planned Parenthood commandos hacked into the Komen website and changed its slogan from "Help us get 26.2 or 13.1 miles closer to a world without breast cancer" to "Help us run over poor women on our way to the bank." But, if you're that eager to run over poor women on the way to the bank, I'd recommend a gig with Planned Parenthood: The average salary of the top eight executives is $270,000, which makes them officially part of what the Obama administration calls "the 1 percent."

Three truths, in particular, should be obvious to everyone reporting on the Komen-Planned Parenthood controversy. First, that the fight against breast cancer is unifying and completely uncontroversial, while the provision of abortion may be the most polarizing issue in the United States today. Second, that it's no more "political" to disassociate oneself from the nation's largest abortion provider than it is to associate with it in the first place. Third, that for every American who greeted Komen's shift with "anger and outrage" (as Andrea Mitchell put it), there was probably an American who was relieved and gratified.